6 Million Instagram Accounts Hacked, Including Celebs

Instagram, a popular photo and video sharing platform with more than 700 million users, may be on the brink of its largest hacking incidence. The social media platform had a bug that apparently allowed hackers to access millions of accounts. Some details obtained include phone numbers and email addresses.

As more information continues to emerge, it is deemed that as much as 6 million accounts may have been compromised. The attack apparently may be high-profile, targeting several celebs, the hackers claim.

Selena Gomez is among the celebrities whose accounts were hacked. She was attacked 2 days ago in which a glitch in Instagram’s system was exploited to post nude pictures of the celebrity and her boyfriend Justine Beiber to more than 125 million followers.

The Daily Beast received a list 1,000 celebrities, politicians, media personalities and sports stars which the hackers claimed to have hacked.

In order to verify the authenticity of this info, the revealed email addresses were randomly used in creating Instagram accounts. In either case, the phone number or email address was already linked to an Instagram account.

From the list, there was an entry for the President of the United States. The associated email address was confirmed and seemed to be linked to Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media. Email sent to the address didn’t deliver while the corresponding phone number rang but no one received.

Christiano Ronaldo also must have been caught by the hacker’s web. The email address was once again confirmed not to be publicly available. The person in charge of the account didn’t reply to inquiries. Pop star Jennifer Lopez has also been affected.

The Facebook-owned social media network announced that it had fixed the said bug that hackers used in exploiting accounts. But this fix may be too late for the millions of persons whose personal info is already out into the hands of hackers.

The hacking group, referred to as Doxagram, announced that Instagram “is yet to understand the full impact of the bug.”

Some of the acquired emails may be available elsewhere on the Internet. However, most of these when searched on Google do not return relevant results. This means that they must have been obtained from a private source.

Additionally, the emails are not part of the biggest data breaches which impacted sites like LinkedIn. All this emerging info authenticates the worry that the hackers dug up past public security glitches.

The hackers are currently running a searchable database containing personal info of the alleged hacked persons. You can also get info on ordinary accounts.

Different users whose emails are listed on the searchable database admit that they used the said emails to create Instagram accounts.